Feature image by Mona Hatoum, Untitled (cut-out 11), 2009. Tissue paper. Photo by Joerg Lohse. Image via Alexander and Bonin.

Listen:

They said burn the keys
but only our hair caught fire.

We walked to the borders
with photographs and letters:
This is where the dying began
their dying, this is where
they knifed the children.

The judges called us in
by our cities. Jericho. Latakia. Haditha.

We swore on a god we never met, to love
the lakes, the ice caps,
one frost after another,

but at night in our dreams
the library burnt,
the pears were still crisp in the pantry.

We waited for our flooded village
to be siphoned, the stone bridges rebuilt.
We ate the house keys with salt.

Hala Alyan

Hala Alyan is a Palestinian American writer and clinical psychologist whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, POETRY, and elsewhere. Her poetry collections have won the Arab American Book Award and the Crab Orchard Series, and her debut novel, Salt Houses, won the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her latest novel, The Arsonists’ City, was a finalist for the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her forthcoming collection of poetry, The Moon That Turns You Back, will be published by Ecco.